


It Starts Like This

by Arkada



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Comfort Food, Domestic Fluff, Found Family, M/M, Returning to Malta (The Old Guard), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25931074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkada/pseuds/Arkada
Summary: On a warm, lazy morning after leaving London, the team shares breakfast in Joe and Nicky’s villa in Malta.Nicky cooks, Andy sleeps in, Joe is an incurable romantic, and Nile thinks about family.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 41
Kudos: 324





	It Starts Like This

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the delightful, exquisitely crafted source material.
> 
> All translations made, regrettably, with the aid of Google Translate.

The radio in the kitchen is playing some sort of grand choral music that makes Nile think of Ren Faires and medieval courts, and Nicky’s humming along and bobbing his head to it like it’s a Top 40 playlist. And to him, that’s probably exactly what it is, Nile realizes. He’s almost a thousand; maybe all music written after the eleventh or twelfth century sounds ‘modern’.

The realization doesn’t come as a shock, anymore - she’s come that far, at least. It’s more like, _oh yeah, of course, I should’ve guessed that._ For all she’s seen in the bare week since her first death, it’s still easy to forget what they are, what _she_ is, but remembering doesn’t rewrite her entire universe like it did the first time. Maybe one day, she’ll be dismissive of any and all music written after the era of Beyoncé and _Hamilton_.

Reaching for a chopping board, Nicky finally spots her standing in the doorway, and smiles. Joe’s described Nicky’s smile as _the sun coming up_ , and yeah, Nile can see it - slow and small, but lighting up his whole face.

“Good morning,” Nicky says, grabbing the board and turning back to his half-prepared mass of food.

“Anything I can help with?”

“Thank you, no.”

Nile raises an eyebrow and stares around at what looks like three different meals underway, each enough to feed an army. “You sure? I know I was a Marine, but I promise I can cook things other than MREs.”

Nicky turns around to look at her, the board laid aside, his gaze turned serious and grave. “Nile. You single-handedly stormed Merrick’s lab and saved all of us, especially Andy. No-one here will ever think you’re not capable.”

Nile shuffles her feet. It’s a lot of sincerity for this early in the morning. “I’m just saying.”

“And it’s just breakfast.” He smiles gently. “This is meant to be a holiday for you, too.”

Which is nice, it really is, but Nile’s never been good at sitting around while others do the work for her. She feels her chin set, like she’s daring him to turn her down again. “Then I’m setting the table.”

Nicky’s expression is unreadable, but he nods his head at the cabinet over the sink. “If you insist.”

Nile opens the indicated cabinet, and finds an assortment of china plates and bowls. She helps herself, then digs through the cutlery drawer with her free hand, stacking mismatched knives and forks on top of the plates. She doesn’t let herself look at anything else, especially Nicky’s gaze following her. “Whoever cooks doesn’t have to set the table. That was the rule in my mom’s house.”

“That sounds fair,” Nicky says evenly. “Thank you, Nile.”

Nile breathes in, _three, four, five_ , and out, _three, four, five._ Her grief isn’t smaller, yet, and she doesn’t think she wants it to be, but she’s starting to carry it better now. She’s not even sure what time it is in Chicago - if they’re making lunch or dinner or just asleep - but she does know whoever’s cooking won’t be setting the table.

Here in Malta, it’s just past sunrise, the sky turning a brighter blue and the clouds losing their pink glow. She leaves the kitchen, flagstones cool under her bare feet, and drops her stack in the middle of the dining table in the main room.

Joe, already seated, looks up from his book with surprise. “Nicky let you help?”

Nile shrugs, spreading out the cutlery. “He didn’t _stop_ me.”

Joe parses this for a second before he leans back in his chair, and shouts in the direction of the kitchen. “Why have you never let me set the table, _caro mio_?”

“Because it wasn’t the rule before, _habibi_!” Nicky shouts back. “I don’t make the rules, Nile did. I can’t set the table now, that’s just how it is.”

Joe mutters something fond that Nile doesn’t catch, before meeting her eyes. “Nine hundred years and more I love this man,” he says, hand pointing to the kitchen, “and does he let _me_ make the rules? No. Does he let our fearless leader, whom we obey in battle without hesitation, make the rules? No. Why do you get to make the rules, hm, _ukhti_?”

Nile shrugs. Joe’s tone is light and teasing, but for a second she can’t match it. _Because Nicky knows I miss my family and he’s taking pity on me by pretending my mom’s rules still matter?_ Then the same stubborn streak that made her insist on setting the stupid table in the first place quashes that, and she comes back with, “Maybe he thinks I’m prettier than you.”

Joe laughs, bright and open like everything else about him. It’s as warming as Nicky’s smile. “That is it. He is so kind he won’t tell me I’m too ugly to touch the plates.”

Nicky vents a string of loud and offended Italian from the kitchen, which only makes Joe laugh harder. It doesn’t deter Nicky in the slightest; if anything, the volume rises.

“ _Sì, sì_ , I yield,” Joe calls, finally making Nicky go quiet, and winks at Nile. “I am the most gorgeous creature to ever have blessed God’s green earth-”

“That’s better!” Nicky says.

“-except for you, my heart, for every day your sight blesses my eyes is a gift,” Joe concludes with a shit-eating grin.

Nile is caught between a snort at the overplayed joke and a sigh at the depth of the romance underneath it. She manages to convert both into a chuckle instead, and adjusts a fork on the table like it matters whether it’s perfectly aligned to the place setting next to it.

Nicky seems satisfied with Joe’s affirmation of their mutual attractiveness, and there’s quiet from the kitchen. Joe goes back to his book with a smile. It’s a battered hardcover, faded and scuffed around all the edges, that Joe plucked from a stack on the villa’s mantlepiece after they arrived last night. Nile squints at the title - Arabic, which she can’t even sound out.

“We have books in English, too, if you want one,” Joe says, nodding towards another stack in the corner of the room. “I think there’s some written after the eighteenth century.”

“I’m good, thanks.” It’s a kind offer, but Nile has no intention of puzzling her way through Austen - or Chaucer - on an empty stomach. She sits down at the table instead, leaving the spot opposite Joe empty for Nicky, and sticks her bare feet in a warm sunbeam making its way across the floor. The villa’s massive, arched windows are all wide open to catch the cool sea air before the heat of the day hits, so there’s plenty of sun for Nile to take advantage of.

Nicky seemed to be nowhere near finished, so Nile lets herself doze a bit, listening to the distant rustle of the grass and the birdsong outside, the soft rhythm of Joe turning pages over the top. She misses a lot of things about the Marines, but the inability to ever have a lazy morning isn’t one of them.

Nile moves only once in between sitting down and Nicky bringing out the food, and that’s to keep her feet in the sunbeam. As if by magic, Andy appears from the bedroom as soon as Nicky emerges from the kitchen, flinging herself into the free seat across from Nile and grabbing both bowls directly out of Nicky’s hands. “This looks fantastic, Nicky.”

Nile can vouch for it _smelling_ fantastic, too, inhaling sharp-yet-creamy parmesan, chicken and mushrooms, and too many herbs and spices to name. One of the customs the immortals have apparently dropped - or maybe they never bothered to pick it up - is eating certain foods only at certain times of day. Nicky’s breakfast offerings are scrambled eggs with chopped bell peppers, and a mouthwatering risotto.

And something else, Nile amends, as Nicky heads back to the kitchen to grab yet _more_ food. Joe has risen half-way out of his chair to help before Nicky waves him to sit down again. Joe yields, but grabs a serving spoon and starts loading up Nicky’s plate like he’s making a point. Nicky rolls his eyes, smiling, and disappears into the kitchen.

“I can get heart disease now,” Andy observes, piling risotto onto her own plate. “Gotta watch what I eat, or some shit. I might get taken out by a blood clot.”

“Or kidney stones,” Joe says, as Andy’s mountain of risotto continues to grow regardless. “Or allergies. Cancer.”

“Diabetes,” Nile throws in, and they both laugh. Nile feels a silly little flare of relief and pride at managing to land a joke with people inconceivably older than she is.

“Clear a space,” Nicky calls, reappearing, and Nile pushes aside the eggs to make room for-

She stares as Nicky sets the tray down. “Is that chicken and waffles?”

Nicky nods and sits next to her. “I thought you might like something that reminded you of home.”

For an absurd second Nile wants to cry. It _does_ remind her of home - of a hundred dinners at her grandpa’s house and every roadside diner she’s ever been in - but it’s also because Nicky, who she’s known for less than a week, would go to all that effort just in case Nile _might_ be hungry for soul food.

“Nice job, you idiot, she’s crying,” Andy says, and Nile swipes at her cheeks.

“Happy tears, guys, I promise,” she says, and looks at Nicky. “ _Grazie_ ,” she attempts in her best Italian. It still sounds way too much like French for her liking, but Nicky smiles his small, warm smile anyway.

“ _Prego_ ,” he says, and passes her a serving fork.

Nile digs in; it all tastes as good as it smells, and for several long minutes she does nothing but eat and try to keep her moans of enjoyment to herself. The others are quiet as well, focused on their own plates, though Nile’s pretty sure that Joe and Nicky are playing footsie under the table.

It’s as unlike that first strained, awkward dinner in the church in Goussainville as a meal could be. The others can actually take their eyes off Nile, which is an improvement, and she’s not desperately trying to remember which name belonged to which man. Not staring at all these strangers and wondering how the hell she was meant to belong with them, while she could see them all asking themselves _Why her? Who is she?_

The idea of Nile’s team being her family isn’t exactly new. In the Marines that’s exactly how it went - comrades she didn’t pick and didn’t have anything else in common with, overnight became people she would die for. The immortals have that same near-instant feeling of connection, but there’s something else to it as well. They might have been thrown together by what Nicky calls destiny and Andy seems to think is completely random chance, but there’s a deep, profound affection between all of them that Nile thinks didn’t just happen on its own. Even for Booker, absent but never forgotten. His betrayal wouldn’t have struck them so deep if they hadn’t loved him deeply, too.

It’s an affection they seem determined to bring Nile inside of, now she’s here. The other three spent the flights to Malta sharing with her just a little of their thousand years of common history and languages, which is how she knows that when Joe was teasing her before breakfast, he called her the Arabic word for _sister_. Andy’s promised to teach her a dozen different ways to cheat at cards, and last night Nicky helped Nile wrap her hair up to sleep, in a style he said Joe liked to wear a few hundred years ago when his hair reached his waist.

If they’ve chosen to make her a part of whatever this is, this odd but fierce little family, Nile’s chosen them right back. She chose them when she returned to Copley’s house to help Andy instead of getting the train, when she marched into Merrick Pharmaceuticals with nothing but a semi-automatic and Andy’s axe in its case over her shoulder. When she told Copley to make the record state she was killed in action, instead of going back to her mom and brother for those five or ten years before her lack of age started to show.

With the dust settling, and a sample of what a life with these people _outside_ of a combat situation might look like, she’s starting to feel more sure she made… well. At the least, she made _a_ right choice.

Family or no family, it brought her to holidaying in the Mediterranean, eating the most indulgent breakfast she’s had since she got deployed. That’s got to be worth something.

Eventually Nile thinks to ask, “Where did you get the waffle iron? Last night you said you hadn’t been back here in ages.”

Nicky shrugs. “On the way here, I told Joe I wanted one for you, and there it was in the kitchen this morning.”

Heads turn to Joe, who grins at them over a forkful of eggs. “And wherever I got it, I definitely didn’t steal it from a big hotel that caters to American tourists.”

Andy laughs and Nile almost chokes on her waffle. “You did _not_ -”

Joe snorts. “I did not,” he agrees. “I bought it in Brussels when we changed planes.”

“Okay, that’s better,” Nile says. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s not what Copley meant when he said to lay low until he finds us a job.”

“Eh, if he can’t cover up one waffle iron theft then he’s not worth keeping alive,” Andy says, waving a knife illustratively.

Joe shakes his head. “No murder before coffee, please.”

“Is there coffee?” Nicky asks, metaphorical ears pricking up. He sends a pleading look at Joe. “ _Per favore_?”

Nile pulls a face at him. “Oh, so nobody else is allowed to touch breakfast prep but you won’t even think about making your own coffee?”

“Joe invented coffee,” Nicky tells her, and Nile’s head swings around again.

“Is that true?”

Joe gets up from the table. “Probably not,” he says, heading for the kitchen. “ _Hayati_ , where did you put the grounds?”

“Same place I always put them!”

“We haven’t been here in fifty-six years, can you be a little more specific?”

Nicky sighs loudly, and gets up to help Joe look. Nile eats some more. It’s good, _very_ good, but clearly nobody’s ever told Nicky that chicken and waffles should be served with syrup. She chews her delicious yet unsweetened chicken thoughtfully. Maybe she should share her grandpa’s recipe.

This _is_ Nile’s family now, whether she asked for them or not, whether she saw them coming or not. She’s going to teach Nicky to make the best damn chicken and waffles any Freeman has ever eaten.

Resolved, Nile glances towards the kitchen, to check on the progress of the coffee. The boys are taking a suspiciously long time to find something Nicky put away just last night, especially in _the same place as always_. Andy’s wink only confirms Nile’s theory.

“They’ll remember we exist in about ten minutes,” Andy says, helping herself to Joe’s waffle despite there being three or four still on the tray. “Hope you didn’t want coffee in a hurry.”

“Is this where I say, _it’s fine, I’ve got all the time in the world?_ ” Nile asks. Andy smirks, and gives her an approving nod.

“Now you’re getting it, kid.”

“Yeah.” Nile turns it over, and… yeah. “I reckon I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta for this one, [Apples](https://appleslostherpassword.tumblr.com/).
> 
> My tumblr is [here](http://ao3-arkada.tumblr.com/) \- mostly Marvel Cinematic Universe works right now, but there is more The Old Guard fic on the way.


End file.
